#ioten

It’s foggy and cold, as he’s come to expect of San Francisco. Brochures and web images of glittering water, clear skies, and warm sunshine are all true, but not nearly as often as glossy photos had indicated to him. So when Ten catches sight of the little cafe, tucked between a (surprisingly) immaculate patissiere and the street, he grabs at the opportunity to escape the wind, even though it was his own boredom that lead him to the streets of Japantown.

The moment he steps through the doorway, he’s overwhelmed with a sense of familiarity, from the clearly Japanese-influenced decor to the melody flowing from the back corner of the room at the hands of a stoic faced boy, who sits straight-backed in front of the upright piano. The other is clearly also of Japanese descent, black hair falling around his face, though even so Ten can tell his eyes are closed, fingers moving deftly across the keys.

“Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake,” Ten says aloud before he can help himself, and the only other in the room is startled, abruptly stopping in the middle of the bar, and Ten can’t help but feel a measure of loss when the music stops.

“Ah—  irasshaimase ,” the pianist calls as he stands from the bench, sharp grey eyes meeting Ten’s for a split second as he rushes to get back behind the cafe counter, weaving through low shelves filled with books. “I apologize, I didn’t notice a customer had entered the shop…”

Ten’s gaze trails up the barista’s slim waist to the edges of collarbones just visible from the neckline of his shirt before finally reaching the other’s stoic expression, though the barista (pianist?) shifts a little under Ten’s scrutiny. “It’s no problem, if anything I apologize for disrupting your practice,” Ten answers smoothly, fixing the other with the barest hint of a smile.

The barista (pianist? Pianist who happens to be a barista?) can’t be much younger than Ten, if at all, and he merely shrugs before gesturing at the menu behind him. “I just play for fun, nowadays. Would you like to order anything, or are you just here to read?” His words are clipped, but not impolite.

“Just green tea, please,” he requests as his gaze slides across the room. It’s cozy, as it had appeared from the outside, and surprisingly organized for the sheer amount of furniture it contains. Numerous armchairs and sofas littered between shelves, some reaching the ceiling, others barely as tall as Ten’s hip, all filled with books and novels of varying size and genre, many showing signs of wear.

“Here you are, and if you get hungry, you’re always welcome to stop by next door to our family’s patissiere, though we ask you do not remove the books from this portion of the building,” the barista monotones at Ten as he hands him his drink, as if he’s recited this line a thousand times. A book cafe connected to a patissiere, tucked into the corners of San Francisco, and honestly, Ten isn’t surprised. He might have been, in his first couple of weeks in America, but he’s come to accept the unexpected. Ten nods his thanks, accepting the cup of tea, ignoring the pang of longing in his heart as he settles at one of the tables, absently picking up the novel left there, unable to stop the wry smile as he notices that it’s a collection of history’s greatest ballets.

As much as Ten would like to feign ignorance on the reason behind his multiple returns to the little book cafe, there’s no one to delude but himself, so he really may as well not.

Izumi Iori. It takes Ten an entire three visits to get just the baristas name, and only from a tall boy who stops by to gather lecture notes from “Iorin” with a lazy drawl of a thanks.

(“So your name is Iorin?” “No! Don’t call me that...It’s just Izumi, to you.”)

His parents own the dual-business, working daily in the patissiere portion of the shop, while their two sons, Izumi Mitsuki, aged 23, and Iori himself, at 19, to run the cafe portion of the shop, generally Mitsuki during the day, and Iori taking over for his brother after his return from school. This, Ten gets from an overly chatty patron of the cafe one sunny day a month after his first visit, as he sips his tea and acts just the right amount of disinterested and focused at the same time.

Ten is a person of action. He got himself to America by his own motivation. He practiced late nights, countless hours for his understudy position. Yet here he is, idly pushing his bangs out of his face with one hand, as the other plays with the edge of a page in the novel he can’t focus on,  because yet, how uncharastically, he can’t bring himself to say anything.

But as it turns out, he doesn’t need to. A slim hand slides into his vision with a pair of hairpins, unexpectedly cute; light blue with little usamimi deco, resting on the palm, and Ten’s eyes trace up the pale arm to Iori’s deadpan expression.

“You’re always brushing your hair out of your face. Pin it back, it’s annoying to watch,” is the curt explanation he receives before the barista turns away to take a customer’s order.

While his first reaction is mild irritation— he’s a dancer, of course he knows how to pin his hair—  Ten doesn’t miss the red flushing Iori’s ears and the second is something akin to shock, with the realization that Iori has been watching him.

————

Izumi Iori, who moved to America when he was in elementary school, really likes cats (surprising) and books (less surprising), and dislikes sweet coffee drinks, because they’re the hardest to clean when spilled.

Ten picks up these random pieces of information at every visit, perhaps taking just as much pleasure in getting them as in the process it takes to get there. Iori is easily flustered, once one gets past his cold expression and sharp mannerisms, and Ten takes some sort of twisted pleasure in verbally poking and prodding at him while his own hands are wrapped around a cup of perfectly brewed green tea that Iori has just pushed at him.

While less often, Ten also lets Iori pull information out of him. That he’s just a year older than Iori, having moved from Japan to study at the San Francisco Ballet School while an understudy to members of the San Francisco Ballet. That he doesn’t actually care for sweet drinks at all, either, and much prefers simple green tea, and not because it reminds him of home.

“How was it?”

Iori’s voice breaks through the haze of Ten’s thoughts, and Ten looks up from the novel he’s just finished, sincerely hoping his distress isn’t clear.

“You’re an asshole,” Ten starts, and continues before Iori can interrupt him, “You didn’t say the book ended badly.” “Badly as in you didn’t care for it, or—”

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” Ten gripes, looking to the side, still refusing to let Iori know exactly how much the book got to him. Though by doing so, he completely misses the little smile Iori gives as he sets another cup of tea down to replace the one that had gone cold hours before.

————

“Who’s the asshole now,” Iori mumbles, late one night when most other customers have long since left, and it’s just Ten watching as Iori thumbs through the last few pages of the most recent book the dancer left for him. Somewhere along the line, they had fallen into exchanging books and titles, which had lead to quiet afternoons and evenings of sitting across from each other in silent yet comfortable company.

Ten merely gives a smug little smile, curled up on a particularly squishy armchair, nursing a cup of warm milk tea that warms him in a different way than the four hours of practice he had just come from.

“Where do you get these books anyway,” Iori asks as he sets the book down on the coffee table, running a finger gently down it’s cover along the spine, “We mostly rely on donations, but these are all clearly secondhand, so if there’s a store nearby…”

“I’ll take you there,” Ten says right away, perhaps a bit faster, a bit more eager, than he would like. Nonetheless, Iori lights up, or as much as he ever does.

And that same look stays on Iori’s face the entire time they’re at the bookstore the following weekend, where he spends well over an hour filtering through volumes. Stays, though maybe a little conflicted when they stop at Japantown for Harajuku crepes decorated like little animals.

(“Do you like cute things, Izumi?” “O-of course not! Why would you say such a thing, Kujou-san…”)

————

And the week after that , Iori brings Ten to the Japanese Tea Gardens, where they have free matcha tasting, Ten revelling at the Golden Gate Bridge. While he had been here for a number of months, outside his regular visits to the book cafe, Ten didn’t particularly care to go sight-seeing, despite Riku’s pleas for more photos.  As it is, he monotones his request to Iori, who seems mildly taken aback before hesitantly stepping closer to Ten so that the elder can take a selfie of them both, with the iconic bridge in the background.

It’s only when Ten is tapping at the screen of his phone to get it to focus that he is suddenly aware that this may very well be the closest he’s been to Iori, not counting the brushes of hands in the shop, and it takes every iota of Ten’s focus to take a proper picture. Once it’s done and over, altogether too fast to truly form proper, let alone coherent, thoughts, Iori declares he knows possibly the best Japanese restaurant around, not counting his parents’ place, of course.

(“Hey, Kujou-san, do you miss Japan at all?” “Of course not. Why would I miss something I willingly left?”)

Ten doesn’t find opportunity to visit the cafe for almost a month after that. Practices with the San Francisco ballet begin to pick up, and it means he spends long hours alone, after rehearsal, after almost everybody else has returned home or to the dorms, and it takes every last bit of energy he has to return his own dorm and collapse into bed.

The next time he manages to get to the cafe, he spends more time drinking tea and watching Iori bustle around, the cafe crowded on account of the gloomier than normal weather outside. As is, he promises that he’ll come back the next day, hurriedly rushing out the door to hopefully beat the storm home.

————

As San Francisco would have it, the rain starts dumping the moment the door closes behind Ten, and Iori sighs as he cleans up for the day, prepping the coffee bar for tomorrow before bracing himself to be soaked as he runs outside to take out the trash.

Like he expects, he’s drenched within seconds, and the fleeting thought of wondering if Ten managed to get back safely crosses his mind, as he flings the bags into the dumpster. What he isn’t expecting, though, is to see the very slim figure of this thoughts standing from a crouch in an alley across the street, leaving his umbrella over a cardboard box, with the gentlest smile that Iori has seen yet.

————

Ten is startled out of his thoughts by a hand closing around his wrist, and he’s only given a moment to be shocked before Iori’s dragging him back towards the cafe, ignoring Ten’s protests, either because he can’t hear them over the pounding rain, or simply because he’s stubborn.

He’s only given a moment to take in the way Iori’s hair is messily plastered to his face and neck, white collared shirt soaked through, before Iori disappears and returns within moments, only briefly, to shove towels and spare clothes into Ten’s arms, pushing him towards the restroom.

When Ten re-emerges, Iori is already dressed, similarly to Ten, setting two cups of tea down on the table in front of what has become Ten’s favorite armchair. They drink in silence until Iori excuses himself, mentioning that he has to go clean up next door, but that he’ll be back soon. And that Ten is free to stay, considering the storm outside.

————

Ten doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing he knows, he’s awake and Iori is curled up on one end of the couch across from him, working his way through a novel. When the barista notices Ten is awake, he offers a quick smile, about to return to his book before Ten speaks, not quite sure what possesses him to do so.

“Play for me.”

“...Huh?” Is Iori’s less than intelligent response, and Ten blinks at him.

“The piano. I haven’t heard you play since that first time.”

Iori seems to pause, as if thinking, before he concedes.

“What do you want me to play?”

“Anything.”

“Mendelssohn, then.”

("Izumi Mitsuki." "Just Mitsuki, or even Mikki is fine." "Does your brother play the piano often?" "Not really? It's there mostly for decoration. Iori doesn't like playing in front of people.")

————

Ten thinks he might be a little selfish.

“No, you’re definitely selfish,” the monotone of Gaku drones across tinny laptop speakers, and Ten glares at his webcam where his friend sits, across the Pacific Ocean. “I can’t believe you went to America just to pick up a Japanese boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Ten bites back, wondering why he even bothers calling his long-time friend when it just riles him up.

Gaku levels his sharp gaze on Ten, piercing even through a laptop camera, “Really now. Or at least, you want him to be.”

Ten looks to the side, which is as good as answer, and earns him a rare laugh.

“I hope you know that you’re a very difficult person to read, Ten,” Gaku mentions, perhaps a bit too offhandedly, and Ten isn’t sure if he wants to laugh at the unintentional pun behind Gaku’s words, or if he wants to tell Gaku that he’s not any better. “I don’t think anyone really, truly, knows Kujou Ten until they’ve seen him dance.”

Ten opens his mouth to retort, then shuts it, inspired. “...I gotta go, Gaku. I’ll talk to you soon,” he manages, logging off before Gaku can even reply.

(“...You know, Kujou-san, you don’t talk much about yourself.” “There’s not much really to say .”)

Iori walks into the performance hall, awed. He had been here once before with his family, for the yearly Nutcracker performance, the same year he had moved to America. This time, he settles into his seat alone, nervously tugging at the edges of his sleeves.

Swan Lake.

The ballet from which Iori had been playing selections, the very first time Ten and walked into the cafe.

But this time, it’s Ten performing, and Iori watching in silence and awe. Of power and grace, as muscles flex under opaque tights. Of muted snark turned to passion, and if Iori ever thought Ten was focused when engrossed in a good book, it pales in comparison to the fierce concentration that’s evident on Ten’s face. Of emotions that are fleeting in existence, if there at all, are now so clear Iori can see them plain as day from halfway back in the opera hall.